Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (12 page)

What does “understanding” mean in Chechnya? It means, not to kill. That is how you recognise tolerance, and for the present there is no other way. Even now there are those who continue to believe that playing at amnesty games is an indication of tolerance on Kadyrov’s part as he supposedly saves fighters’ souls and preserves the nation. Stuff and nonsense! They are binding people together through even
more bloodshed, and see that as fettering them to their cause. Buvadi wanted to bind people by offering them a chance to live without his involvement. That was fundamental. He gave them a second life, although his job was to terminate their first. He gave it from the goodness of his heart, and there is no one to replace him.

The last time I saw him, we took a long time saying our goodbyes.

“I hope they at least have a rifle in the house where you are going to sleep tonight,” Buvadi grumbled.

“There is no rifle there. I don’t want one,” I muttered. “I’m tired of guns. We have had them for seven years already. Are you really not tired of them yourself?”

Buvadi said nothing, but I felt his solidarity. He too was fed up with guns, with the constant fear. He was terribly weary of never being parted from his weapon, sleeping in combat fatigues, and living in a house that resembled a barracks. They say it is when people grow weary that they die.

Part II: The Protagonists

CHECHNYA IS THE PRICE YOU PAY TO BE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UN

May 21, 2001

The past week has brought striking evidence of how enthusiastically we have got stuck into bringing back the Brezhnev era.

The influential Human Rights Watch group timed publication of its report about just one of the hundreds of civilian mass graves in Chechnya to coincide with the arrival in Moscow of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an attempt to demand support from the international community, and in particular, of course, from the United Nations, for a proper inquiry. A great barrage of irate Kremlin comment, refutation and repudiation ensued.

Why were the state authorities squirming so nervously on their chairs, as if someone had put drawing pins on them? Can Secretary-General Annan’s visit be seen as a drawing pin? And why, finally, did the UN’s top diplomat remain silent – disgracefully so for someone in his position – when at least some human sympathy was called for, and a few words, even if couched in diplomatic terms, at least referring to the need to rein in the ongoing war crimes in Chechnya?

There is no doubt that we have observed the conclusion of a business deal on a podium of human bones. It was the signing of a contract between two major players, the Kremlin and the most senior official of the United Nations. So why all the edginess? Why this nervous burst of commentary from Putin’s court liars? It was all perfectly logical: the Russian side was not completely sure it had the upper hand and was very concerned that in the wake of the Human Rights Watch report the deal might be called off at the last moment.

But first things first. Let us look at the main points of the report, a highly detailed, almost forensic document about a mass grave
discovered in January–February this year not far from Grozny and just across the road from Khankala, the main Russian military base in Chechnya. A total of 51 bodies were unearthed, and the way the mass grave was identified is entirely typical. The information about the first of the bodies, that of Adam Chimayev who disappeared on December 3, 2000, was obtained by the Chimayev family after a commercial deal: the relatives paid an officer who had been guarding Adam while he was held at the military base the rouble equivalent of $3,000 for information about the location of the burial site. After payment had been made, the family was allowed to collect the body.

The news rapidly spread through Chechnya, and the relatives of other Chechens who had vanished without trace flooded into Dachnoye. As a result 19 bodies were identified, leaving 34 unidentified. On March 10, 2001, without warning, the unidentified bodies were reburied by military personnel, who failed to retain biological specimens as is required in such cases. In its report, Human Rights Watch cites numerous accounts by witnesses about the behaviour of the Prosecutor’s Office and the relevant Russian government and presidential institutions at that time. It characterises it as “unsatisfactory.”

In essence, the behaviour of the Russian authorities proved that they wanted no investigation of the mass grave; they flatly denied it was anything to do with military personnel. But the human rights activists have also put the international community on notice for turning a blind eye to the Dachnoye scandal. The USA, the European Union, the European Parliament and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in effect did everything they could to hush the story up. Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who was flying on February 27–29 on an inspection tour of Chechnya immediately after the discovery of the graves, did not even visit Dachnoye to meet the relatives of those who had been identified.

The report concludes that it is essential for the inquiry into the mass grave to be resumed, and that a special international commission should be created as a matter of urgency. Its first task will be to exhume the 34 hastily reburied unidentified bodies under the supervision of
the International Red Cross, the OSCE Support Group, experts from the Council of Europe, and representatives of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

In order to understand what was behind the reactions of the Kremlin and Secretary-General Annan to all this, let us take a look at what is going on in the United Nations in spring 2001, primarily as regards Kofi Annan himself. We need to establish whether it is in principle possible to have an international protectorate in Chechnya under the aegis of the United Nations, and what the powers of the Secretary-General are.

It is worth mentioning that before anything was heard of the Human Rights Watch report, or any scandal had been raised in relation to it,
Novaya gazeta
was already trying to get answers to these questions in New York and, moreover, directly from UN headquarters. We were doing so in highly diplomatic, terribly behind-the-scenes centers of power, namely, the Security Council’s lounge where so-called international humanitarian policy is cooked up. Needless to say,
Novaya gazeta
’s correspondent was conducted to this privileged enclave, which is shielded from prying eyes, and introduced to the right people “unofficially.” I am immensely grateful to the person who acceded to my request, because he knew exactly the questions I wanted to raise and the real purpose of my raid on the Security Council: to discover what the United Nations could do to resolve the dreadful crisis in Chechnya.

My view, arrived at after discussing dozens of approaches to a peaceful settlement of the conflict with hundreds of people living in Chechnya – ordinary people and people in various official positions, people in Grozny and in villages, in the valleys and the mountains – is clear: given the way the situation has evolved up to the present, it is impossible to get by without an international protectorate. Third-party involvement is imperative. It is needed to temporarily separate the parties to the conflict, and today these parties are not by any means the resistance fighters and federal forces, as official Kremlin propaganda would have us believe. The conflict is between the federals and the civilian population. Intervention is needed to cool passions as far as possible, and to move towards a softening of positions.

But let us return to the UN in Manhattan. Most of the UN Security Council diplomats I questioned agreed that it would be practically impossible to get a resolution passed. Before the Security Council can mandate peacekeeping troops, the consent of both sides in a conflict must be obtained. In this case, the civilian population of Chechnya, daily bearing the brunt of violations of their human rights, cannot be recognised under UN definitions as such a party to a conflict. As for obtaining the consent of the Russian Government, that is out of the question.

There is, however, another approach for obtaining a UN mandate for peace enforcement, and it was under this protocol that events in Iraq and Yugoslavia proceeded, which later entailed major unpleasantness for the United States when it lost its place on the UN Commission on Human Rights. If we could have the Chechen crisis considered in terms of peace enforcement, the Security Council diplomats assured me, there would be no need to obtain the consent of the parties to the conflict.

But Iraq and Yugoslavia are not Russia. They are only members of the United Nations, while Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and holds a veto. A decision under Article 7 [which covers crimes against humanity] is taken by the Security Council, and this meant that while such proposals could be introduced, the result, after protracted discussion, would be a foregone conclusion dependent on the viewpoint of the Russian Government. Most of the diplomats advised me that UN peacekeeping in Chechnya was out of the question, and that had to be faced as a given fact. The only means of influencing the situation and finding a way out of the deadlock would be the personal intervention of the Secretary-General of the UN.

So then we turned to Kofi Annan. Could we pin our hopes on him? Back then, in late April, Security Council diplomats already foresaw events taking the turn we have seen in Moscow in the last last few days: Kofi Annan, they felt, turns a blind eye to the human rights situation in Chechnya and, accordingly, also to the Human Rights Watch report. These, incidentally, were high-ranking diplomats working immediately under Kofi Annan, and they assured me that today he does not
want to focus on the suffering in a tiny spot on the planet which is situated on the territory of the Russian Federation. After all, his prospects of getting a second term as Secretary-General are nil without Russia’s help.

What does all this add up to? There are occasions in life when everybody distances themselves from you. When the going gets really tough, even close friends slip away. You find you have no real allies, so you just have to go it alone. This is exactly what is happening with Chechnya: we must stop the war ourselves. Nobody is going to help us. Remember, we have been here before. It was the tacit willingness of the international community not to challenge the authenticity of the Chernokozovo “model” pre-trial detention facility in Chechnya, which gradually acquired the status of a sham Potemkin Village for receiving international VIPs, that led to later disgraceful developments. By the dozen, and later in their hundreds, people began not to be imprisoned but simply to disappear, after which their bodies might be found only by chance, buried in unspeakable circumstances.

Even if Moscow gives in to the pressure from Human Rights Watch and agrees to resume the inquiry into the mass grave in Dachnoye, it too will go the way of Chernokozovo. No matter how obscene it may sound, Dachnoye would become a model mass grave. The state authorities would find a way to wriggle off the hook. Before you knew it, foreign journalists and parliamentarians would be transported in droves to visit Dachnoye. That would be the end result of the report Human Rights Watch produced with the intention of putting pressure on the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Sad but true.

Meanwhile, what is going on in Chechnya? More of the same: a wave of atrocities, lies and terror. There are rumors that on May 13 in Urus Martan, Arbi Barayev himself – a field commander and brutal murderer – was detained but released the same day by the Commandant of the Urus Martan District, citing orders from his superiors. On May 14, also in Urus Martan, an unmarked infantry fighting vehicle drove up to the home of the Bardukayev family. Six men had been taken from this house during a security sweep in January. Three were released shortly afterwards, but for almost half a year the family knew
nothing about the fate of the others. The officer who climbed down from the vehicle, using exactly the same methods as Arbi Barayev (you remember the severed heads of Western engineers lying in the snow?), showed photographs of the bodies of the Bardukayev brothers to their relatives, who confirmed their identity. The officer demanded $1,500 to disclose where they were buried. Exactly the same routine as with the body of Adam Chimayev in Dachnoye. Only here fewer bodies were involved, so the price was lower: not $3,000, only $1,500.

A FUGITIVE FROM HIMSELF. WHY THE INTERVIEW WAS CENSORED

May 21, 2001

Man as he is rarely suits us. Like life itself. You keep wanting to substitute what you would like to believe for reality and either view it through rose-tinted spectacles or give it horns and a tail, depending on your personal inclinations.

Aslan Maskhadov today is a virtual person. He is neither really there, nor not there. Society has seen and heard nothing of him for a long time, so when the President of independent Ichkeria surfaces out of the blue with something to say, the majority take exception. The Maskhadov of late May 2001 is very different from the Maskhadov of the beginning of the war, let alone the President of Chechnya in 1997–8. Today he is an irreversibly exhausted, ageing officer, boxed into a corner, who understands a lot but can’t do much about it. He no longer has all the information at his fingertips and his conclusions tend to be vague. He is trying to retain his place in the history of his people but, tragically, does not know how to go about it. He is a fugitive from his former self.

But then, so are we all, we members of society who want our information objective. Some are keen to defend today’s Maskhadov, others to act as his prosecutors. The former paint him in rosy colors, while the latter portray him with scary horns; what they should do is just listen and take in everything he says in order to know the real situation, to understand what “they” on the other side are thinking, and how deep the gulf between us is.

As you may have guessed, there has been a debate at
Novaya gazeta
about whether this interview could or should be published. What people wanted to believe outweighed reality, and the text was emasculated. It was argued on the one hand that Maskhadov does himself no favors in the interview and we don’t want to make things worse for him by publishing it.